The Pope is like a Rockstar...oh and some shopping.

Columbia Road (near Old Street)

Ryantown-Rob Ryan's store on Columbia Street-what actually drew me to Columbia Street (I heard about it in a London blog)

Great vintage store where I found a beautiful neclace and handmade bag for good prices!

Somewhere near Old Street-maybe Curtain Rd.

Trafalgar Square-Outrace-London Design Festival Exhibit

Anti-Pope protest in Trafalgar Square

They marched down Whitehall towards Westminster Abbey where I think the Pope was giving mass.

So today has been a very interesting day. Pope Benedict XVI landed in Edinburgh earlier this week, went onto Glasgow, came down to Twickenham (near London), and finally ended up in Westminster Abbey to give a prayer vigil yesterday. Today his Pope-Mobile started at Westminster Cathedral for a mass and traveled down The Mall towards Buckingham Palace to Hyde Park where he is currently conducting a prayer vigil in front of more than 80,000 people standing in Hyde Park. The Pope being in London is a big deal because one, it is a very secular country where religion is kept very separate from the state, and two, it is the first time the Queen has invited the Pope making this his first ever State Visit. Since England and the Catholic Church have fought for hundreds of years and had a bit of a falling out, it is again, quite a big deal. All this being said, the city has been a little bit of a mess for the past few days (Central London mainly). So today, instead of starting out in Central London, I headed back to Northeastern London to Old Street.

You might recall from a previous post that I visited Columbia Road which has a line of about 20 very unique boutique shops only open on weekends. Well actually, as it turns out, a lot are only open on Sundays I found out. Duped again! I still found some great places, but some other ones that I wanted to go in will have to be visited on a Sunday in the future.

From here I traveled to Bethnal Green where the London Design Festival was holding a "Pound Store" of designer made objects in an abandoned store on Roman Rd. Of course the tiny store was packed with lines out the door when I got there. I was a little dissapointed to find that the products weren't really even worth a pound, and yet people were grabbing handfuls of things. I think their marketing them for a pound made them seem more exciting then they really were. Strange broaches, paper, pencils, and the like that you could regularly pay 50p for (or no doubtedly live without), were being grabbed up by the masses.

From here, I decided to go to Trafalgar Square where they had another exhibit from London Design Festival-Outrace-in which robot arms were set up. I'm not exactly sure who was controlling them or what they do, but it was interesting. I was secretly hoping to catch a glimpse of the Pope (or really I wanted to see his Pope-Mobile as I've seen him a few times in Rome), but I instead got caught in an anti-Pope march which went though Trafalgar Square, down Whitehall, and towards Westminster Abbey where I think the Pope was holding mass. Now I might have been brought up Catholic, but I'm also pretty open and tolerant to other religions. However, I didn't agree with some of the signs people were holding or the hate in their eyes. Others seemd peaceful and in quite a good mood chatting with the hundreds of police walking along side the macrh. One woman had a bumper sticker (yes bumper sticker size) on her forehead that read "Religion is Stupid". Now in my opinion, someone who wears a bumper sticker on their forehead is stupid, but that's just my opinion. I kind of hope it tears off part of her eyeborws because she was actually dumb enough to have it covering them. Would a sign really not do? A lot of U.K. citizens were pretty upset that his visit is costing them 12 million pounds (yeah, I'd be a little upset too), but also that he is bringing religion to the forefront which is hardly ever done in their country. Also, all of the recent sex scandals in the Catholic church of course haven't really warmed people up. However, hundreds of thousands of people lined The Mall while his little converted Mercedes went down it at like 5 mph (snipers were postitioned on the roofs and helicopters hovered in the sky no doubt with snipers). The people ran along the Mall while he drove to Hyde Park and people were crying and holding up their children to be blessed as he passed. They all screamed and cheered along confirming yet again that the Pope is like a rockstar. It very much reminded me of when we were in St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican in Rome (on a school trip) and the Pope happened to show up for a quick mass, and people were climbing the hundred year old columns, sitting on other peoles shoulders, crying, screaming, and passing out. Crazy...